Although Heideggerian research has extensively studied the influence of Aristotle, the figure of Descartes has not received equivalent attention, despite the near-complete publication of the Gesamtausgabe and the abundance of available documentation. From his earliest lectures in Freiburg and Marburg, Heidegger maintains an interpretative confrontation with the thought of Descartes, which extends even to the Zollikon Seminars of the 1950s and 1960s. Unlike Aristotle, whose presence is affirmative and formative, Descartes appears as a contrasting figure, which may explain the relative academic neglect of this connection. This paper examines the beginning of modern thought through Heidegger’s interpretation of the Rules for the Direction of the Mind, a text that permeates a significant portion of his reflections on Descartes. In doing so, it contributes to a more precise study of their relationship and offers new impulses for specialized research.
This paper explores some of the problems raised by the Husserlian explanatory model of affective acts in relation to the phenomenon of value. It is divided into two main parts. In the first, Husserl’s theory of value is analyzed from the perspective of its foundational acts, paying special attention to the problem of the relation between objectifying and non-objectifying acts. This section concludes that the intentional schema with which Husserl analyzes affective acts presents problems that derive from his “visual” interpretation. In the second part, the converging ideas of Carl Menger and Ludwig Feuerbach on value theory and action are presented, based on which it is proposed that the missing element in the Husserlian schema is the concept of need. With this concept, an extended intentional scheme of affective acts is developed, featuring a double intentionality of consciousness directed to both the subject and the object.
Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi’s realism is inseparable from the philosophical controversies in which he was involved. The most famous of them involves the Kantian “thing-in-itself”. However, Jacobi’s realism has to be interpreted also according to its relation to Spinoza’s philosophy. Starting from a passage of the novel Allwill, rarely studied and yet highly valued by Jacobi himself, we propose to explore Jacobi’s realism (the system of absolute objectivity) using the notion of “interruption” as a reference point. This notion allows us not only to decipher conceptual aspects of Jacobi’s thought, but also to understand the way in which he works concretely with written culture. The interruption of the pure emptiness of thought is, for Jacobi, the beginning of life (as free acting) expressed from the conditions of conceptual discourse, which are not really appropriate for such expressions.
This paper makes a comparative analysis of the thought of the philosopher John Gray and the Christian socialist theologian John Milbank—both contemporary English authors—on the relationship between liberalism, religion, and international order. Although they come from different intellectual backgrounds, both agree that this relationship does not consist simply of the interaction between political and religious actors, but above all of a convergence in which ideology and religion merge to give rise to specific forms of political religion and theology that define the ways in which human life is conducted on a global scale. Despite this similarity, this paper ends by highlighting the differences that exist between Gray and Milbank regarding their conceptions of the post-liberal world derived from their assessments of liberalism and religion.
Hay filósofos que construyen sistemas, hay filósofos que los derriban.Daniel Dennett (1942-2024) fue, con notable destreza, ambas cosas a lavez. Su influencia se extendió más allá de los límites disciplinarios: hizoborroso el límite entre una investigación “propiamente” científica y una“propiamente” filosófica. Content and Consciousness (1969) inauguróuna carrera que pasaría por hitos como Brainstorms (1978), Elbow Room(1984), The Intentional Stance (1987), Consciousness Explained (1991),Freedom Evolves (2003) y From Bacteria to Bach and Back (2017), entremuchos otros. Cada uno de estos libros desafió consensos establecidos,provocó polémicas fértiles y, sobre todo, amplió el horizonte de lo quela filosofía podía preguntar y de las herramientas con las que podíaresponder. Durante más de medio siglo, su obra recorrió los territoriosmás disputados de la filosofía contemporánea —la consciencia, laintencionalidad, la evolución biológica, el libre albedrío, la religión—sin perder jamás ni el rigor argumentativo ni una vocación contagiosapor hacer de la filosofía una empresa pública, accesible y urgente.Este número especial se inspira en un libro en particular del filósofo:Darwin’s Dangerous Idea (1995). Treinta años después de su publicación,es una obra que sigue ocupando un lugar central en las discusionescontemporáneas sobre la mente, la evolución y el alcance explicativode la ciencia.
Transhumanism is a philosophical movement that considers the attainment of a higher evolutionary stage possible because of the feasibility of the “singularity.” Some positions consider that this is not possible due to the intrinsic limits of artificial intelligence (AI). I claim that, despite the impossibility of reaching superhuman stages, AI satisfies the criteria of cognitive enhancement (at some restorative level and within limits). This enhancement manifests itself in specific capabilities that result in an increase that transcends human limits but does not lead to a higher evolutionary stage. To defend this, I examine what AI, artificial superintelligence (AIS), and the singularity are; subsequently I discuss some objections to the possibility of achieving a general artificial intelligence (GAI) drawn from John Searle, Roger Penrose, and Hubert Dreyfus; finally, I argue (by means of a taxonomy) at which levels AI can be said to represent cognitive enhancement.
En este trabajo confronto el materialismo de Dennett con el enactivismo postcognitivo. Aunque ambos son formas naturalistas y eliminacionistas en lo que se refiere al teatro cartesiano, el funcionalismo de Dennett aún queda limitado por su adscripción al representacionalismo en el funcionamiento interno de la mente. La principal diferencia que se observa entre estas dos formas de materialismo afecta al lugar de la experiencia y la fenomenología, un lugar central aceptado por el enactivismo como marca de la vida al precio de abandonar la idea de representación y contenido.
The aim of this paper is to provide a general reconstruction of the agreements and divergences between Daniel Dennett and Stephen Jay Gould that underlay the discussion between them during the last quarter of the 20th century. I show that Gould’s initial theoretical and methodological critiques of radical adaptationism already outline the reasons that led to the crisis of both sociobiology and Evolutionary Psychology, and that Dennett’s inability to understand the motivations behind Gould’s attacks on radical adaptationism stems from his decision to approach the controversy surrounding the epistemological credentials of Evolutionary Psychology from an exclusively theoretical perspective.
Exteriorization expresses different meanings in the field of philosophy that often lead to various conclusions categorized within the theories of extended mind. Slovak philosopher Pavol Strauss (1912-1994) tends to focus on the notion of exteriorization under his phenomenological-existentialist optic. Strauss understands exteriorization under the structure of his anthropological conception of human beings and examines its functions, manifestations, and processes. Both exteriorization and interiorization are located by Strauss among the human faculties, but their function is not that assigned to them by the Augustinian or Thomistic traditions: Strauss does not define these two faculties only as powers of the soul, but also as powers of the spirit. Exteriorization and interiorization are both faculties particular to human beings. In this article, I discuss the principal descriptions of ten processes in which the faculty of exteriorization plays a role and manifests its singularity and impact.
This research lies halfway between philosophical hermeneutics and postmodern thought. With Gadamer, I analyze the phenomenon of interpretations to search for the experience of the contemporary world through language. I also delve into the postmodern perspective of Lyotard on the end of grand narratives and I add to the debate Vattimo’s reflections from the perspective of weak ontological thought. I take these authors as a basis for the critique of philosophical hermeneutics from postmodern thought, which ultimately leads to a kind of bridge towards an interpretative ethics, necessary in our times.
In this paper I discuss the final two chapters of Darwin’s Dangerous Idea devoted to the evolution of morality and offer a summarized version of the genealogy of morality that I have developed in recent work, in part as a response to the shortcomings identified in Dennett’s proposal. Regarding chapter 16 of Dennet’s book, I argue that one can go beyond his approach and offer an evolutionary explanation of the origin and evolution of morality. Regarding chapter 17, I point out the moral non-specificity of his proposal for a “moral first aid manual”, which leads to the necessary characterization of the scope of morality. In the third section it is argued that this genealogy of morality offers a way to fulfill Dennett’s basic goal of an evolutionary account of morality. This proposal does not create a gap between biological evolution and cultural evolution as two alternative processes, as Dennett and memetics assumed, but rather integrates them through the process of individual development, by which each new human biological individual is culturally constituted.
This article discusses how the corporeality proposed in Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology refers to an original virtual dimension. To this end, the relationship between movement and perception as constitutive of all lived bodes is reviewed. Subsequently, this relationship is problematized based on the Merleau-Pontian distinction between concrete movement and virtual movement. It is shown that movement not only permits the opening of fields of meaning, but fundamentally indicates a virtuality of these fields. Lastly, it is suggested to rethink the apriorism of the body, shifting it towards an apriorism of the virtual, insofar as the genesis of sensible being arises from a virtual dimension.
In this paper, I reply to Incurvati’s (2020, pp. 101-127) objections against the naive conception of set. This is the conception according to which a set is the collection of objects that satisfy a given property. Following Incurvati’s objections, I claim that (i) the weakness of a variety of inconsistent theories is no reason to reject them, (ii) naive set theories are as ad hoc as ZFC (and others classical theories), and that (iii) there is no compelling reason to believe that naive set theories (formalized in relevant logics) are theories of non-extensional objects.
This paper proposes some critical considerations on Daniel Dennett’s philosophy, particularly on his notion of human free will in relation to determinism. To this effect, it analyses the four types of possibility studied by Dennett and their relationship with causality and chance in the context of the philosophy of biology. In addition, it also critically evaluates the distinction made by Dennett between deterministic, indeterministic, and nihilistic universes, with special attention to the treatment conferred in physics to the idea of causality in classical, relativistic, and quantum mechanics. Finally, it explains how the compatibility between human free will and deterministic natural laws defended by Dennett could be developed and explained in evolutionary epistemology.
This paper discusses some of Daniel Dennett’s analyses (associated with the notions of “intentional stance,” “reverse engineering”, and “design”) of the problem of teleology in biology. On the basis of this discussion, a possible way in which these notions can be articulated within a general perspective on the role and legitimacy of teleology in biology is proposed. Finally, some didactic implications of such analyses are discussed in relation to the problem of teleology in the teaching of evolutionary biology. More specifically, it is argued that Dennett’s analyses constitute an adequate epistemological foundation for a didactic approach focused on fostering students’ “metacognitive vigilance” over their teleological intuitions.
Are psychiatric disorders caused by a malfunction in the mind’s mechanisms? Or can they be explained as the result of a mismatch between our psychological mechanisms and an environment different from the one in which these systems evolved? In this paper, we draw on central elements of Daniel Dennett’s conception of proper function to address a specific version of the debate between theories of dysfunction and theories of mismatch, focusing on cases of substance addiction. Following Dennett’s idea that there is no decisive fact determining the proper function of biological systems, we argue that the decision regarding the dysfunction of the reward system in addiction is underdetermined by the evidence. Our argument calls for a reorientation of the discussion, suggesting a new focus on the pragmatic considerations that can be invoked to choose between two empirically equivalent theories.
